Thursday, December 8, 2011

The diaper saga continues...

I know everyone is just dying to hear what's going on with Julia's diaper rash, so here's the update.

I talked to a pediatrician friend of mine about the whole situation, who asked me if we'd tried oral anti-fungals because that's the next thing to try after the topicals fail (or so says the "Red Book" - he says that means something to those in the know). Anyways, no, we hadn't. Is it really that simple? He seemed to think so, so I called my pediatrician this morning. The nurse hadn't ever heard of this approach and so a few hours later the doctor calls me back on her day off.

She says Julia's bloodwork from last week came back and it's weird. (She doesn't appear to have the thalassemia trait that I do, but something like a certain white blood cell count was low? I was literally walking out the door and she was vague so I'm not sure exactly.) Maybe it's related to the persistent diaper rash. Maybe it's from the fever she had the day before we drew the blood. Maybe it's a fluke and nothing at all. Bottom line, we need to redo the labs (ahhhh!). I didn't even ask what was funny about them, because my objective was to get a prescription for the oral anti-fungal meds. Now I kind of wish I had, so I could spend my evening googling (which means it's probably a blessing in disguise that I hadn't).

So, back we went to the hospital for another traumatic blood draw. Again, the phlebotomist failed on the first try and I asked for a pediatric nurse (next time - go straight to the nurse) (there won't be a next time, right?) who got it on the first try using a vein in her ankle. Poor Julia started crying as soon as her sleeve got pushed up. She knew exactly what was happening and it just broke my heart that we had to go through it again. Fortunately, we had dinner plans immediately afterwards and it obviously took her mind off of the whole experience because she was all smiles for the rest of the evening. (She apparently rebounds better than her mother because I just get more upset about it the more I think about it.)

The other long shot we're looking in to is diabetes, which can also cause a persistent yeast rash. My gut isn't telling me she has this, but it's not outside the realm of possibility so tomorrow I might try to catch some pee and bring it in to the doctor's office. Depends how successful I am on the pee-catch front.

We did end up with oral nystatin in the end, though, so we started that tonight.

I'm a little bit relieved that maybe the oral nystatin will finally clear things up, or at the least that we have a plan. I'm a larger bit pessimistic about it because it's hard to believe that anything will work at this point. And there is a part of me that's growing the more I mull it over, that's absolutely terrified that the bloodwork will come back funny again and something awful will be wrong with my baby.

We should have blood results tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for JJ.